Review: The Domestics

Set in a harsh, gone-to-seed post-apocalyptic Earth, Kate Bosworth and Tyler Hoechlin play a couple who aren’t quite on the same page anymore. However, they’ll need to work together in order to get themselves to safety at Bosworth’s parents place across country. Domestic disharmony will have to wait to be sorted out, whilst they have graver matters at hand. There are feral gangs and all kinds of creeps looking to nab them and do who knows what to them. Lance Riddick plays a family man who takes the couple in at one point, whilst David Dastmalchian plays a bleached psycho creep.

I like a good post-apocalyptic movie, but this 2018 film from writer-director Mike P. Nelson (based on his own short film) is more of a frustrating near-miss. Its borderline “The Divide”-esque bleak tone is a plus, but there’s just enough wrong here to keep this one from entirely satisfying. The performances for one thing, are crucially under par. Character actor Lance Riddick has a rare miss and is surprisingly amateurish (reminiscent of Danny Glover’s awful work in “Saw”), whilst leads Kate Bosworth and Tyler Hoechlin aren’t up to par. Hoechlin fares the better of the two, but is mostly just a pretty face in a role that needed someone with a bit more presence. Meanwhile, for an actress who keeps getting work, Bosworth continues to disappoint with a lack of charisma and acting talent. She’s bland and unimpressive, and it’s the lead role. Even worse, she speaks so softly so often that great chunks of dialogue were quite difficult to pick up. If it were a minor character, I wouldn’t be quite so bothered, but for our lead protagonist it’s unacceptable. The best performance by far is a bizarro turn by David Dastmalchian, who is just so off-the-charts bizarre in appearance and performance that he at least has you remembering him after the film is over.

Nelson wears his genre influences on his sleeve here, you’ll be reminded of early Romero/Craven, “Mad Max”, the underrated “Doomsday”, and “The Purge” all spring to mind (The nasty gang The Nailers in particular seem like the invention of George Miller by way of “Doomsday”). The worldview in this one is super, super grim with barely even a shred of human decency among the surviving populace evident. It’s not at all uninteresting in that regard.

Despite an interestingly grim-and-then-some apocalyptic scenario, this genre entry comes up a bit short. Poor performances and too much whispering from Bosworth in particular are pretty big debits. It sure is nuttier than a fruitcake, though.  

Rating: C+